U.S. launches Tomahawk strike on Syrian air base

U.S. guided missile destroyers launched 59 Tomahawk land attack missiles on April 7, 2017, that struck the Al Shayrat airbase in Syria believed to be the origin of a chemical weapon strike on the town of Khan Sheikhoun. US Navy Video

Share this:

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

Author: jeffpelline

Jeff Pelline is a veteran editor and award-winning journalist - in print and online. He is publisher of Sierra FoodWineArt magazine and its website SierraCulture.com. Jeff covered business and technology for The San Francisco Chronicle for years, was a founding editor and Editor of CNET News, and was Editor of The Union, a 145-year-old newspaper in Grass Valley. Jeff has a bachelor's degree from UC Berkeley and a master's from Northwestern University. His hobbies include sailing and trout fishing.
View all posts by jeffpelline

4 thoughts on “U.S. launches Tomahawk strike on Syrian air base”

Bernie Sanders described Syria and a quagmire within a quagmire. Now we have entered the twighlight zone of the empire strikes back – not knowing what we are doing, who we are fighting or how to determine when or if we can win. Anyway – attacking Syria may distract the corporate media away from the Russia investigation. But maybe not?

Syria is a completely failed state and is already carved up and the strike last night does sends a message to Assad and his bombing of civilians. Kurdish commanders who are part of the SDF have already expressed interest in going to Idlib to get the jihadists out after Raqqa is liberated. Best thing that can happen is for Turkey to leave Syria, they are just getting in the way and have little if any desire to attack their ISIS friends. There were comments by American military how disgusted they were with Turkey’s performance with al-Bab, “they got their asses kicked”, one was quoted as saying.
In the battle of Manbij last summer that was led by SDF/YPG and supported by USAF and SOF, that town suffered minimal damage and loss of civilian life. SDF was successful because they know how to organize locals into the fight for their town. The first thing they do is form a military council, made up of locals who know the block by block details and where ISIS has their positions. No US military died in the battle of Manbij, several American volunteers in the YPG did die, but that is rarely mentioned in the media back here. A Sacramento local political activist named Michael Israel died from a Turkish air strike on a YPG position outside Manbij earlier this year. The town was already liberated but Turkey was injecting its military presence and threatening to take the town. They tried taking al-Bab, all they did was show how ineffective the Turkish Army and their “so called moderate FSA partners were and the town was almost destroyed. Over and over Turks abandoned the fight with Daesh and left huge weapon supplies, Kurdish forces laughed at how obvious what they were doing, resupplying their Islamic State friends.

When I hear Americans say what a mess Syria is and we should stay out. I know they don’t pay attention to what is happening in that country. Syria needs to become a republic with autonomous states inside the borders and Assad needs to go. Until the West faces up to the fact we screwed the region up with Sykes-Picot and the Iraq invasion of 2003, American policy fingerprints are all over that mess. We have a responsibility to help the Syrian people and Sykes-Picot, that it needs to be amended, or there will be more war. The Kurds in the Northeast part of Syria offer a great template for peace in Syria, it’s called Rojava and at its core includes democracy, gender equality, tolerance for all religions. Lets back the people who believe in human values like that.

Some pundits are suggesting the attack was motivated more by trying to get Russia-gate out of the headlines than any humanitarian concerns. Especially since Sec. of State Exxon had earlier in the week stated that Syrians would have to solve their own problems. Other people have suggested that the Russian version of events (chem lab hit) could have some credibility because the group in question could have had access to chemical weapons and/or materials to make them.